An important and engaging lesson on bicycles and bicycle safety that will enlighten and educated your class. Learners are shown the most important bicycle safety rules. After a discussion about what they already know about bicycles,...

Puppets are like magical objects for young learners! Often, a child will feel more comfortable "talking to" a puppet than to an adult. Here, youngsters make puppets and use them to act out stories about having new experiences. As a final...

The goal of this lesson is to have learners come up with a collection of fun and exciting activities they could all try over the summer vacation. Each child is charged with creating his/her own page of a class summer fun book. The page...

Young learners love to pretend and role-play. Here is a lesson that allows them to do both. They get to pretend they are going to open and operate a restaurant. They set up menus, gather restaurant props, and role-play the jobs of...

Young learners love to pretend when in school. This activity allows them to do just that! In it, everyone constructs a poster of a pretend picnic. After a class discussion on what should be brought to a picnic, kids can draw or cut out...

Here are a couple of unique ways to utilize old newspapers in school in the form of an arts and crafts project. The first is a smile umbrella made out of newspaper, the second requires learners to look through newspapers or magazines to...

Here is a four-corner debate-style activity specifically geared to election year issues. Learners group themselves according to whether they strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree with statements that relate to elections...

Read Ira Sleeps Over, then identify elements of plays that are also common to books. Learners analyze character and setting, consider how these elements relate to a play, then write a one-paragraph skit using the characters from Ira...

Your beginning readers will practice blending sounds with this hands-on activity! Each learner gets their own paper slide, cards with consonants, and cards with vowels. Then, after practicing as a class, they can blend consonant and...

Learners recognize words by common spelling patterns. The teacher reads a poem to the class and look at rhymes for the word moon. They practice handwriting in conjunction with spelling, and they can even write their own -oo- poem! 

Here is a wonderful lesson designed for students with special needs. This well-thought-out lesson uses Big Books, familiar stories, and has a lot of review learning built into it. The book, The Keeping Quilt is used in the main part of...

Some of what we know about a character is directly stated. Some of what we know is inferred by events in the story. Character maps help primary learners recognize the difference. After modeling with a story your class has read, pupils...

Build your class's dictionary skills with this fun game. The activity allows learners to better understand dictionary usage, spelling, and vocabulary. By the end of this activity, they should be skilled word finders.

Explore the world through literature! With push pins to mark where each story came from, learners examine cultural differences, geographical location, and how those elements affect story content. This lesson could use deeper development,...

Word processing practice and vocabulary blend with proofreading in a multi-purpose lesson that makes excellent use of an hour in the computer lab. Learners edit the grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors in a given paragraph (not...

Looking for a powerful reading comprehension method? Try visualization! Learners use this strategy to increase comprehension of a chapter book selected by the teacher. As an assessment, individuals or small groups draw pictures of the...

Incorporate writing into your physical education class. In groups, learners unscramble a list of words related to exercise and use them in their journal writings. Using their name, they write one word related to physical activity that...

Learners formulate a definition of art in the introductory lesson for a unit on various art forms. The learning emphasis is placed on Oregonian artist Duff Severe and reflective writing. Young scholars compose an essay describing various...

Junior high learners discuss Lewis Carroll's classic story, Alice in Wonderland. They observe the image of childhood in his photographs and compare them to present-day images. There is a plethora of ideas and links for discussions...

Examine the elements of nonfiction writings in this lesson. Learners list common features of nonfiction and compare nonfiction and fiction books on the same topic. Create a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting the two genres.

If you plan to utilize the ABC miniseries, "The Path to 9/11" in your classroom, consider incorporating media literacy and research skills. After (or while) learners view the series, they discuss ways information can differ from source...

Arranged into small groups, learners read a paragraph of the news story "Texas Kid Writes Book About Presidents." As one reads, others mark the text (underlining important information and writing notes in the margin of the story). After...

What is the missing link? Provide your class with this incomplete essay (it's missing transition words), and have writers place words from the transition word bank into the essay. Also, since only three of the five paragraphs are...

Review selections from Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic and recognize characterization and tone used. Discuss and compare the various tones of each poem. Learners complete a character map and a pair share activity as well....